Climate Action in Agriculture

While being a major contributor to the climate crisis, pollution, and nature destruction, the agricultural sector is also one of the first victims. This is not a future issue. Extreme weather, land degradation, water scarcity, biodiversity collapse and increased food prices are all exerting pressure on our food systems right now, endangering livelihoods and future food security.

It is possible to produce food with much lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and reduced impact on the natural environment, all whilst capturing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in soils and vegetation. Farmers and other land managers can and should make use of this potential to tackle the climate crisis. The key is to restore agro-ecosystems and adopt nature- and climate-friendly agroecological practices.

Emissions reduction 

The biggest sources of GHG emissions in EU agriculture are animal rearing and the use of fertilisers, which together are responsible for nearly 380 million tonnes of CO2e in 2022 or 12% of the EU’s total GHG emissions. On top of this, peatlands drained for agricultural purposes emit a staggering 166 million tonnes of CO2e every year. 

At EU-level, agricultural emissions have stagnated for the past two decades, although trends vary significantly across countries. At the current rate, emissions will decrease little and very slowly over the next three decades, nowhere near what is needed to meet the EU’s climate objectives. 

To ensure that the agriculture sector contributes fairly and effectively to the society-wide effort of mitigating climate change, binding sectoral emissions reduction targets and adequate policies and instruments are necessary. This will entail revising the Common Agricultural Policy, which currently does not lead to significant emission reductions on agricultural land, as well as designing effective complementary tools.    

Carbon sequestration

In our fight against the climate crisis, healthy ecosystems are powerful allies. Forests, wetlands, grasslands, as well as agricultural land can function as “carbon sinks”, storing significant amounts of carbon in their soils and vegetation. However, many of Europe’s ecosystems are severely degraded, and therefore not sequestering as much carbon as they could, or even losing carbon to the atmosphere. To protect and restore our crucial carbon sinks to their full potential, we need to act now. 

Carbon removals, including land carbon sequestration, are an integral part of the EU environmental and climate policy. Together with maximum emission reductions, they will be required to keep global warming under 1.5 °C, limit temperature overshoot, reach EU climate neutrality by 2050, and to accomplish negative emissions thereafter. While natural carbon sinks present many opportunities, their complex nature is rife with pitfalls – not least the vulnerability and reversibility of carbon sequestration – which must be managed through a robust policy framework. 

Carbon farming, as defined by the EU Commission, is any practice of managing land in a way that captures and temporarily stores atmospheric and biogenic carbon in biogenic carbon pools or reduces soil emissions. It can support productive and sustainable farming by increasing soil organic carbon, which has the benefit of improving nutrient cycling, soil structure, and water retention. If implemented well – and by this we mean in a context of ecosystem restoration which benefits climate and biodiversity – carbon farming can be a part of the just transition to agroecological practices, benefiting EU agriculture by reducing the sector’s negative impacts and making it more resilient in the face of a changing climate. 

Our current focus 

• Ensuring that the Carbon Removals Certification Framework (CRCF) delivers real climate benefits whilst also protecting nature and farmers 

• Exploring how the Polluter Pays Principle could be applied to agriculture to accelerate emissions reductions, such as Agriculture Emissions Trading Schemes 

• Convening experts to discuss the shape of the EU’s policy framework for carbon farming through the Horizon Europe CREDIBLE project 

• Advocating for methane emissions reductions in agriculture through the Methane Matters Project